Just Finished Reading: A Matter for Men by David Gerrold (FP: 1983)

Still recovering from a disastrous war and struggling to rebuild her armed forces under Versailles style conditions, the US is in no state to fight off a world spanning plague. Millions are dying across the globe when a second plague emerges, and a third, and a forth until eight distinct pandemics rage unchecked. Finally with billions dead the plagues begin to die themselves leaving human civilisation holding on seemingly by sheer will power alone. As nations begin to rebuild they discover strange plants and animals never seen before beginning to dominate any eco-system they encounter. With few scientists available to decide exactly where these creatures came from or what impact they will have on the recovery programme teams are hastily dispatched to investigate. Among them is James McCarthy who, with two years of science at University, is the closest thing they have to an expert. But nothing Jim has learnt so far can prepare him for what he sees on his first mission. Earth is now the home to giant strange looking worms who hunt anything in their territory including man himself. Almost impossible to kill with conventional weapons the human teams must resort to the use of flame throwers and banned napalm to do the job but as the human casualties mount the remaining American armed Forces begin to realise that they are not simply fighting an unknown infestation but are being faced with an invasion of unimaginable power. The object is not only colonisation but the transformation of Earth’s entire ecology and the giant worms are only the first stage!

It did seem like a good idea when I picked this book up in my favourite SF book shop in London decades ago – a whole series of 4 books dealing with the remnants of humanity fighting off an alien invasion. Of course by the time I got to thinking about reading this series the next three books are out of print. I managed to get a decent copy of the second book but, at least presently, have failed to get any more….. and thankfully so! Because this book was quite honestly very poor indeed. In fact I’d go so far as to say, apart from brief moments when an actually decent story was revealed between the dross, that this was pretty appalling. Not only was the plot all over the place (with whole sections seemingly dropped in at random), but the characterisation was terrible, the dialogue even worse than Star Wars and the author had to tie himself in knots to get the story to make even minimal sense. What made it even worse, if such a thing was possible, was that the author continually stopped what little action actually occurred to regularly, and at great length, lecture the reader on his own particular politics. Almost everyone, at some point in the book, stopped the ‘hero’, sat him down and spent 5, 10, 20 pages telling him how to de-programme himself from the existing political regime (presumably one that existed in 1980’s America) and adopt another that I can only surmise could be called ‘Libertarian’. It was all quite bizarre, rather annoying and, frankly, very boring. I’m really sorry that I spent all of that effort trying to get the second volume. Most definitely not recommended.